


Mistress Mary: Her Secret Garden

by AshjShi



Category: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: Erotica, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sadism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:11:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15584679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshjShi/pseuds/AshjShi
Summary: Seventeen year old Miss Mary Lennox grew up spoiled and friendless in the British colony of India at the turn of the 20th century. August of 1901, a cholera epidemic sweeps through her family's plantation and leaves her without her mother and father.





	Mistress Mary: Her Secret Garden

**Author's Note:**

> I always dreamed of what would happen if Mary hadn't been 11 when she went to go live with her Uncle. Somehow that dream became laced with BDSM and sexual awakening. What if she had been nearly legal age and not forced into a loveless aristocratic marriage? What kind of lover would Dickon be? Colin? Mrs. Medlock? There will be sex. There will be offensive terminology of colonialism. There will be questionable pairings (that I will include in the above warnings as they come to light while I'm writing in serial instalments) and probably cousin relationships (first cousin relationships are -not- incestuous in my home country nor are they in Britain so Americans be warned). 
> 
> This work is a mash-up although I endeavour to use as much original writing as I can. The Secret Garden is in the public domain in any country where the copyright length is Life + 80 years. So if you're in Côte d'Ivoire I am very sorry that you shouldn't read this. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy joining me on this adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Working draft. There is a missing part that I forgot to add between the mother and the lieutenant, but it's late today and I better get some rest.

**Chapter One**

**THERE IS NO ONE LEFT EXCEPT MYSELF TO TOUCH**

When Mary Lennox was sent away to live with her uncle in Misselthwaite Manor everyone said that she was the most wilful and sinful looking young woman they had ever seen. It was possibly true, too. She had a narrow waist that undulated out with her mother's curving hips and breasts. Upon her head she was crowned with her father's bright golden hair. Her eyes glittered with murderous promise -- she, a tiger in the jungle. Her pouty lips always lay slightly parted as if tasting the air for some new treat. She would play with the lace of her gloves or surreptitiously tap her foot at luncheons all while staring unblinkingly at those around her, which drove old men wild and narrowed women's eyes.

There was something untamed about her.

She had been born in India, raised on a plantation amongst the tea groves, and waited on hand and foot by servants who were little more than slaves. Her father was a corporal who had been stationed in India and returned to England only long enough to marry himself a music hall beauty half his age who was more interested in the adventure of living in India than having a family. Mary’s mother had not wanted children and she passed Mary off to the care of an Ayah under the explicit orders to not be bothered if anything should happen to the child.

So Mary, a sickly child, fretful, ugly little baby, was kept hidden away. She became a sickly, fretful, toddling little thing and was kept out of the way also. 

Mary grew up selfishly indulged in all things by the servants who were afraid of her tantrums, but were even more afraid of the frightful retribution of her mother. For Mem Sahib, as Mary knew her, spent most of her days hungover and most of her nights afar at one party or another. When she was around, one was not seen or heard else they would succumb from Mem Sahib’s wrath.

The dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants of the household were her family -- only they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying or complaints. By six, Mary was a monster. A succession of English governesses came and went, never lasting longer than three months at a time. At least her parents gifted Mary with the best education that could be found within the colony of India even though few of these women stayed very long. Mary loved to torment them with her tyrannical little voice and imperious manner.

The only constant in her life was her Ayah, and with her Ayah, the Ayah's son who was always somewhere at heel and fun to torment. As for her parents, Mary actively skirted her mother since Mem Sahib was a jealous creature with fading looks and had long since bored of the wilds of India and Mary rarely saw her father the Corporal. He was in and out doing such and such campaign and commanding such and such regiment, fighting the natives and ensuring they did not rise up during the rather unfortunate famine that affected Britain's campaign to civilise such a wild and uncompromising place. She never saw the two of them together in the same place. Mary was ignored by both of them.

Perhaps because her parents ignored her unless it suited them or maybe just because she had a streak of cruelty in her, Mary revelled in getting the young son of her Ayah in trouble so he had to be whipped. She loved tormenting him by running almost naked through the courtyards until she caught site of him, then she'd trap him so he would be forced to see her in her shift. She'd scream until he was punished. She loved to watch him prostrate on the ground with the overseer's whip slashing his skin. He never cried out.

It was delightful.

So it went. All until her sixteenth year when her father felt he should show her off to his cronies and possibly marry her off to one or another of them and then she was purchased a wardrobe of proper British attire and was ushered to all the local events of his regiment. She was the eligible daughter of the Corporal of Her Royal Majesty's Imperial Cadet Corps which was her due even though her father often said to much aplomb at soirees that his regiment, "Was rife with wastrel rajas requiring wrangling whilst they wilted at windmills." She knew that his regiment -- consisting of young Indian native princes -- was an insult to her father's military might somehow and as a result he poured more attention on her than she felt was necessary considering she barely knew the man who had donated her golden tresses, that in his receding years had turned into a dullish grey.

Her father's attention to her had the bizarre effect of making her mother jealous and territorial. When Mary at one time would have been delighted to have even a moment of her mother's attention, by then she resented and hated the woman. Even the turning of the new century did not excite Mary in the slightest. She hated everyone and everything including the trussed up proper clothing she had to wear despite the oppressive heat.

There was always her Ayah.

There was only one day in her recent memory where her Ayah had not responded right away to her call, issuing salaams and arriving to Mary in quick succession.

On that day, her mother had planned for them all to leave on an August trip to Hong Kong to get away from the height of monsoon season and ostensively to celebrate Mary's birthday. The prior sixteen birthdays had not been any import to the woman, but suddenly she acted as if they were bosom pals and remarked to anyone within earshot that they always were mistaken for sisters -- when of course they had never been so.

Mary was resentful. She could read. She had read plenty a gothic romance. She knew that if they had been in England she would have been married off long ago, but this was the wilds of India and she would be forced to accept the whims of her stupid mother which also included traveling to another country full of strange natives and even stranger British subjects.

The prior evening, amongst a group of prospective proper British husband prospects, her mother had commanded the attention of the room to tell all and sundry that they would leave the very next day in celebration of her daughter's seventeeth year. Eventually they would board a steamship and return back to England and then further onto the continent in hopes of finding Mary a proper husband. Every one had applauded whilst Mary had been furious. Not a jot of it had been told to her before hand and she was vain enough to know that if she threw a tantrum in front of the officers, it would not have the correct effect of making her mother look the fool. So she sulked in abject silence and decided to ruin herself that night by having an affair with a specific officer, a young handsome lieutenant.

Only he had spurned her.

He had to return to England, his honour held him to his marriage despite how his heart cried against it. That's what he had said before Mary stepped on his toe and slapped him across the face and then stomped off into her quarters and slammed the door.

In her room she wailed until her Ayah came, even though the woman stumbled a little when she entered the room, she sang her a song whilst brushing her hair until Mary fell asleep.

The following day was one of those hot days in the late summer, the kind of day that felt awful if you had to wear a stitch of clothing. The cicadas screamed in the trees and Mary just could not sleep despite it being early morning. Her Ayah had put her down for a nap while wearing a shift, but the young woman had ordered her to remove it so she could lie naked over her sheets and under the mosquito netting.

It was so hot and miserable that Mary could not lie in one spot without feeling sticky and sweaty. She tossed and turned, but the heat and the cicadas and the sound of the far away trains just made her restless.

"Ayah!" She cried.

No response.

"Ayah!" Mary cried again. Her room was sweltering. The air sat stiff and pregnant with the heat of the marshes and the river. It stunk like unwashed natives and Mary herself smelled foul despite that she had had her Ayah bring in a bath to sponge her off the previous evening, even though it had been a poor excuse of a bath where her Ayah was plodding in pace.

Not accustomed to waiting, Mary pulled aside the mesh netting. It would be so warm out that the mosquitoes would bite, but she did not care today. She had never contracted malaria herself and highly doubted that she would ever contract it. None of the fevers had affected her either as a child.

No, Mary just wanted to be in her shift and running through the courtyard. At this time of the day, the men would be in the fields and the women would be under the shade and facing out to the cooler air that the patios in front of the river afforded. The ornamental gardens would be empty.

Mary slipped on woven rattan sandals for the room was so warm that even the floor felt warm to the touch. She pushed through double-doors and walked out in the courtyard. A mild sense of propriety made her look around for any prying eyes, but all the windows were empty or dark. No servants were underfoot.

Cheerfully Mary raced down the covered breezeway and stepped out onto the red earth of the courtyard that led to the ornamental gardens. They were her mother's particular favourite place to be in the rainier winter months simply because the gardens were lush and full of brightly-coloured flowers. Her mother had designed many covered nooks with native-woven hammocks and benches to swing on.

However, in the summer's humid heat, the garden pulsed with life and the buzzing of insects as well as the screaming of cicadas in the champak trees and tea groves above. There were walkways carved out of groves of bamboo that were fun to run through during such heat as they were shady and cool and the mosquitoes tended to stay away. The ground was also softer with the leaves falling from the bamboo shoots.

Sometimes Mary would sleep in there, lying on the bamboo, but she had never done so just in her shift before. This whole idea made her excited and nervous as though she were doing something extremely naughty. Sensations that had never been expressed pulsed as she thought of this. Underneath her muslin covered body was a place she had never explored even though there were aches and longings in parts of her that she could not explain.

It was in this bamboo grove that she came upon the Ayah's son. She could not remember his name, only that he was the son of her Ayah and she remembered him watching her from his place at the well. He was dark, all the natives were, and his body lean, but muscular. He had a young man's threadbare moustache growing under his nose and he wore native cloths to cover his body like the others did. 

Mary slipped through a walkway into a wide bamboo grove to find him leaning over a servant girl who was herself on all fours. The girl cried out.

Mary stopped, her almost nakedness forgotten by the sight before her. She was about to yell at them, but then realised that she had not been seen as the two of them were facing the other side of the grove.

The servant girl's mekhela was rolled up around her waist and Mary could see that the Ayah's son was completely naked. He grunted and groaned with exertion as he slammed his body into the her. She cried out, but it wasn't a cry of upset.

It sounded like she enjoyed it.

Mary stumbled and the noise alerted the two of them. He chittered something in the native language and the girl shrieked in clear embarrassment and humiliation as she scurried away toward the bamboo. The girl’s brown behind was showing and her bottom was very shiny and wet. She disappeared into the grove.

Soon too would the naked form of the Ayah’s son. He had taken flight, running.

"Stop!" Mary shouted in the best commanding voice she could muster. 

The Ayah's son stopped running and dropped to ground with his head pressed tightly against his knees. "I sorry Missy Saheb." He said in very stilted English. Mary could see him only from behind and saw that between his legs there was something large and dark hanging there that glistened with wetness.

"You should be. I could have you whipped for this!" Mary was not quite sure what it was that she could have him whipped for, but she did not truly care. The threat was always the important thing. Besides, she was curious about the nakedness of the Ayah's son and wanted to see him from the front. She had never seen a man naked before, even if the man was just a lowly native.

"Tell me what you were doing."

"Yaun sanabanadh, Missy Saheb." He kept his head down as Mary walked around his body. She eyed him all over, noting the criss-cross scars of whip lashes on his back with a hint of pride. She schooled her face into her usual glower, not allowing him to see how much his body delighted her.

"Do not lie to me! I know what yawning is and that certainly was not that!"

His voice croaked in nervousness as he tried speaking in the native language, but clearly Mary had no idea what words he was saying. She came around to the front of him and knew that he was not looking up at her, he just was looking at the ground and could see only her sandalled feet.

"I sorry Missy Saheb. English not so good. Salaam."

"Then show me what you were doing."

He visibly paled and his hands which were flat against the ground, shook with his nervousness. He swallowed before he said, "No Missy Saheb."

Furious, Mary shrieked and stomped her foot, "If you do not I will have you whipped!"

He sat up so abruptly that Mary jumped back. She saw that there was a large hard brown thing between his thighs and pressed tight against his sculpted stomach. It was moist and glistening.

He stared at her and the thing jumped as his eyes crossed over her almost naked state. Could he tell that she was only wearing her shift? He licked his lower lip and the brown thing between his thighs jumped upwards.

It was massive and seemed to grow even larger each moment.

"What is that?" She pointed at the hard thing before her that was attached to the spot on his body that coincided with the place where Mary ached to touch herself.

Although she could see a look of desire cross his eyes, and Mary knew this because she knew what men looked like when they coveted her, she also saw fear. He probably could not speak enough English to explain what it was that he had between his thighs. Or perhaps whatever it was could get him in deep trouble if he did tell her.

Frustrated and aroused, Mary stated, “Nevermind. I will figure it out myself.”

So, Mary reached out to touch it. He still would not look directly at her, although Mary could tell that he wanted to very badly.

She reached out with her hand, but before she made contact with her fingertip, he moaned loudly and she jumped back. He was now looking at her full-on; all pretence of servility gone. His smile gleamed in a way that sent chills down her spine. Nobody had ever looked at her so familiar before. None of the servants had ever looked at her like that.

The thrill within her shocked her numb.

Emboldened by her silence and wide-eyed stark desire, the Ayah's son’s hand found the protusion and began to stroke his slick shaft. His hand pulling on his length at first slowly so to judge her reaction and then when there was only her eyes upon his cock, he pulled faster and faster.

Between watching Mary’s rapt attention and his previously interrupted encounter, it took him only a few moments before he rose to his feet and he began thrusting his cock toward her person.

"How dare you!" She stepped forward one step and slapped his face. He recoiled a bit from the slap, but stood his ground. His reddish-brown skin glistened in the half-light of the bamboo grove. He thrust out his hips and her thigh brushed against him. With another moan, he grasp the long stiff thing protruding from between his thighs and white liquid began to shoot out from it, spraying all over her pale shift.

Mary screamed and he lost all control as the white liquid spurted across and across her. She furiously wiped the liquid off her body and it clung to her hands, a viscous, slimyness unlike any she had ever touched. She knew not what it was only that she wanted it off her body. She shrieked her head off as she ran back to the plantation.

She cried out for her Ayah to remove the now sullied shift. She cried out for him to be whipped for the audacity of doing whatever it was that he had done.

Her Ayah came and trembled while Mary admonished her for her insolent son. She showed the horrified woman the stains on her garment.

She had wanted the Ayah’s son to be whipped and had to satisfy herself with him only being caned. Her Ayah did it herself just as clouds gathered above and then released the midday rains. 

His blood channeled down his back, mingling with the deep red soil.

**

Later that afternoon, Mary woke up from her nap covered in a sheen of sweat. The rains of the midday had ended, but they left an oppressive muggy heat that even the constant fanning of servants could not cool. The heat made Mary very cross and when cross she loved to get up and get some young boy in trouble or preferably whipped instead of caned this time.

"Ayah!" She cried out as she flung the cotton bug net aside. "Ayah! Where are you! I demand assistance at once. I desire luncheon.”

The woman who came to the doorway was not her Ayah. In fact, it was a woman she had never before seen in her seventeen years. "Ayah not come Missie Sahib."

"What is this? I will have you punished for coming in my room and keeping my Ayah from me. Where is she? Ayah!"

Although frightened of Mary, the woman repeated that her Ayah could not come.

"Is that all the English you know? How dare they send me the village idiot. Go away!"

When the woman would not leave, Mary kicked her and slapped her until the woman finally ran away in fright. "Bring me Ayah!" Mary screamed after her. She then proceeded to have a screaming fit and tantrum where she trashed one of her favourite hand mirrors against the wall.

Usually after a tantrum her Ayah would come to tidy up the mess and return everything to right again. This time, Ayah did not come. Other than the servant who darted in to bring a tray of food and tea, nobody came. Nobody came to change Mary's clothes. Nobody came with her daily lessons. Nobody came.

Dreadfully bored, Mary left her quarters while still garbed in her nightdress and wandered the plantation. The sun roasted the deep red earth and the faces of her servants were ashen as they hurried about their daily jobs. No one would speak to her, no matter how much she cajoled.

“Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” she said, because to call a native a pig is the worst insult of all.

She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she caught a glimpse of movement from her mother's veranda and saw some one come out. It was the young lieutenant who had slighted her so the night before. He looked disheveled and embarrassed. 

He leaned against the railing and Mary moved closer to reprimand him for rebuffing her only to pause in surprise as her mother came out after him. She could barely hear their voices and so strained to listen. "You should have left long ago Mrs. Lennox."

"I couldn't leave you Charles. I know my husband has forced you to stay here with the regiment. I should have left for Hong Kong ages ago but I couldn’t leave you.” Her mother placed one hand on the lieutenant's chest.

He grabbed her hand and caressed it although his face betrayed fear. “That does not mean you should remain. A servant died earlier this morning. Just as the little bitch had a boy caned. I heard from the porter."

“Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?” Her mother struck the dramatic pose she used when she was about to faint or get the vapours. It was something she did when she needed attention in an otherwise dull party. She tossed her curly silk hair and wrinkled her delicate little nose that always seemed to be disdaining things.

“Awfully,” the young man answered in a trembling voice. “Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have left weeks ago.”

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands. “Oh, I know I ought!” She cried. “I only stayed because I cannot imagine life without you. Oh. Charles." 

Then her mother did something that Mary had never seen before. Her parents were never affectionate in public or in private. Her mother often flirted, but never had she full-on touched a man. Mem Sahib turned her head and kissed the lieutenant on the lips. Caught in the moment, he pulled her tight to his body and they clung to one another.

Mary grew instantly furious at his lies. He spurned her because he was married only to kiss her mother instead?

The lieutenant ran his hand down her mother's neck and then up into her hair and at the top of her head he gently pushed her downward. Her mother smiled seductively. “Is that how it is, is it?”

The lIeutenant let out air. “He aches for you,” and he moved his hand around to cup her chin and stroke her cheek. She kissed his hand, then licked at his knuckles. He made a growling sound.

Her mother, her tall, slim, aging but pretty mother, floated down to her knees in her lacey dress and she placed her hands on either side of his thighs, kneeding her fingers into the fabric of khaki drill trousers. Her slender fingers undid the button of his fly and as she spread it open, he unbuttoned and pulled his tunic up and away from his cock which sprang free and wholly unlike that of the Ayah’s son that she had witnessed prior. 

The penis that jutted out looked like a pinkish mushroom like the ones that grew in trays in the greenhouse. It was much thinner and smaller than the one of the Ayah’s son. It only came out so far from the pink skin beneath his exposed belly.

Her mother then kissed the head of it and then licked at it and engulfed it in her mouth.

For several moments Mary watched, enthralled by the scene of her mother on her knees praying before the officer with his cock in her mouth. Mem Sahib bobbed her head and the officer stroked at her hair while moaning his arousal.

Mary wondered, could the positions be reversed? Could a woman be treated in such a way by a man?

Her mother’s ministrations continued. Her mouth flexed over the bulbous head and her large eyes lifted imploringly to the fair officer’s face.

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the servants’ quarters that her mother released the penis from her mouth and rose to clutch the young man’s arm. Mary stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.

The officer said, “Some one has died. It’s broken out among your servants.”

It rose like a typhoon, washing over the buildings with their grief. Mary's mother bolted back into the house with the lieutenant hard on her heels.

"I hate you all!" Mary screamed. She stomped her way back into her quarters and shut all the windows and doors and flung herself onto her bed. 

Somewhere she heard three successive gunshots. There was silence for a few moments, then the wailing began anew.

"Stop wailing! Stop wailing!" She yelled at her shadowy walls, but the sounds of grief only grew outside and grew louder into the night.

Despite the noise of the night, Mary slept heavily. When nobody came to her room with dinner, she had sought out her own sustenance and instead found two bottles of wine that she brought back to her room. As the noises in the night grew louder, Mary got progressively drunker until she passed out on her bed.

She woke to silence. Not even a cockerel crowed that morning. As well as spoiled, Mary was callow and unaffectionate so her thoughts lay not in concern for those who had caught cholera and possibly died, they were more in concern about who they would get to replace her Ayah. It was quite obvious her Ayah had died, else the woman would have come to clean up the mess and dress Mary. With a new Ayah there might be a new Ayah's son to torment and Mary did so love tormenting the sons of her Ayahs.

"Someone will come for me." Mary said to the walls. But nobody came for Mary. The day progressed and the house became more silent. Soon Mary grew restless and frustrated from lying in her bedroom. She left her quarters and crossed the courtyard to go to the main manor house. She stopped before entering the wide double doors when she heard footsteps above on her mother’s veranda.

Mary looked up to see one of her father's military friends. She could not remember his rank, only that he was someone important in British uniform. He held a kerchief to his mouth and muttered behind a moustache, "Nasty piece of work this."

"He caught her with her lover, then?"

"Shot both, slashed them through with a bayonet. Then he shot himself. We will tell the family it was the cholera."

"And the daughter?"

"Ho!" Mary called up to them. What were they talking about.

"Ho there! I am Mary Lennox."

The two men looked down at her with pity.

It was the first time anyone had ever pitied her. The shock of seeing it directed to her startled her so much to the bone she neglected to whine about how hungry and bored she was.

"Poor thing. Your life is about to change."

"What do you mean?" Mary asked and felt, for the first time in a very long time, extremely young.

He did not answer her. Instead he asked, "Do you have somewhere to go?"

Mary blinked as if she did not understand the question. "Why? I am at home."

The other man asked, "Do you have any family?"

Mary furrowed her brow, anger brewing under her hungry frustration. "What do you mean? Tell me what do you mean?"

"I mean to say, child, that your parents have died to cholera. You're the only one left here. Alive."

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary learnt she was well and truly alone in India. Both her mother and father had died in the night and had left her nothing but the plantation. Over the course of the next few weeks it became apparent that even the plantation was not hers to keep because her father had run it to the ground and her mother had many debts to fill. She did indeed have nobody in India that could protect her so until they could contact family back in England, Mary was sent to live with an English missionary and his family.


End file.
